Israel’s Magal Security Systems Banking On Trump’s Wall

Magal Security Systems, an Israeli defense and security firm, expects to make money off of a Donald Trump Presidency. The company hopes to win a bid to help build the Trump Wall.

It was Donald Trump’s first and most important campaign promise. He said from the beginning that he would build a wall along the American border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants from south of the U.S. border.

Many people wondered who exactly would build such a wall if it would ever get built. Some still doubt that Trump will build it.

Well Magal Security Systems is banking on the wall getting built.

“We believe that the U.S. government is going to increase its security budgets in the upcoming years and definitely we look forward to take part in it,” the company’s chief executive, Saar Koursh, told The Associated Press.

Magal was established in 1965 as a branch of the Israeli Aerospace Industry focused on developing smart fences for security; 15 years later Magal was floated and privatized and had its IPO on NASDAQ on 1993.

The company now has fifteen branches worldwide.

It makes sense that an Israeli firm would be tasked with the job of building a security barrier. Israel has become reliant on such fences for its own protection.

The country always had such a barrier on its hostile borders with Lebanon and Syria. But just a few years ago it was forced to also build one along the border with Egypt between the Sinai and Negev deserts. That wall was built in response to new terrorist activities in the Sinai and increasing border infiltration by drug smugglers and Sudanese refugees.

Israel also constructed a security barrier along the West Bank in response to increased terrorism like suicide bombings on buses. That fence led to a drastic reduction in terrorist activity. While its detractors call it a wall, that one only has concrete barriers along population centers to protect against sniper fire and block those on the other side from seeing into Israeli cities to plot mortar attacks. Most of the barrier is a wire fence.

Detractors of Trump’s plan point out that simply building a wall would not help. There would also be the added costs of hiring and deploying a whole new force just to keep watch over it.

The one thing that Israel does not do is build a simple fence known in Hebrew as a “dumb fence.” It builds smart fences equipped with sensors which detect any contact coming from either side. Soldiers man warning stations with computers that keep track of activities along the fences. There are also spy cameras in place, army patrols along all of the border fences and scout towers from which the borders are monitored.

So if Donald Trump makes good on his promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico it will make sense to use Israeli expertise in its construction and Magal Security Systems has that expertise.

By: Gil Tanenbaum (JewishBusinessNews.com)

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